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Louisiana Public Service Commission to revisit vote halting energy-efficiency program

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After a group of local environmental groups filed suit challenging a recent vote to halt a new statewide energy-efficiency program without public comment, the Louisiana Public Service Commission plans to revisit the issue next month.
(NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune archives)

PSC Chairman Eric Skrmetta had previously maintained that public comments were heard before the commission's
original vote in December 2012, and therefore did not need to be
rehashed in February.

Skrmetta had a change of heart Tuesday. The Metairie Republican clarified that he had intended to conduct the February meeting "in a way that was efficient and fair."

"It was never my intent, nor will it ever be my intent, to deny someone the opportunity to speak their mind," Skrmetta said at the PSC's monthly meeting in Baton Rouge. He added that his role as chairman is to "ensure fairness and keep the meetings moving swiftly and with the best interests of all who are conducting business before this commission."

The energy-efficiency program provided electric utilities and natural gas providers one year to develop programs that would offer hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers financial incentives for making improvements that lower their electricity use.

The effort was approved in December 2012, but the PSC had an about-face in February, following a two-month span during which the board's leadership changed.

The proposal was estimated to cost between $25
million to $30 million, or about 40 cents per month for the average utility customer. Supporters of the initiative have contended that the price tag
would be offset by potential savings to power bills.

"The statewide energy efficiency rules serve to provide clean, affordable energy for Louisianans," Jordan Macha, a Gulf States representative for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. "With ratepayers and citizens across the state bearing the burden of the PSC's decision on energy efficiency, it is imperative that they be given an opportunity for meaningful participation."

Macha noted that the PSC now requires people interested in speaking to fill out a request card and sign in at each meeting.

By Tuesday, some commissioners had enough of the energy-efficiency program's looming uncertainty. "It's been hanging over our heads month over month over month," said commissioner Lambert Boissiere III, D-New Orleans. "It flies in the face of fairness at this point."

The suit, alleging that the five-member PSC did not allow public comment before voting in February to stop the program, was filed in April in 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge by the New Orleans watchdog Alliance for Affordable Energy, the Sierra Club and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, a Baton Rouge-based conservation group.

PSC members on Tuesday also delayed taking action on a series of moves to help address concerns that the costs of installing and using solar energy systems are being passed onto other electricity customers.

Some state regulators also say utilities get a bad deal in how extra electricity is sold back to the grid, saying that power providers and non-solar customers subsidize solar users by purchasing unused solar power at retail rates.

The PSC, which regulates utilities outside of Orleans Parish, pushed off a planned discussion and possible vote in April on as many as eight proposals addressing the issue, such as instituting a surcharge to cover fixed costs of using solar power, and determining whether to grandfather existing net-metering customers under any new rules that are adopted.

Customers of the region's utility companies, including Entergy Louisiana, which provides power to Algiers and suburban areas south of Lake Pontchartrain, and Pineville-based Cleco Power, which serves customers on the north shore, would be impacted by the potential changes.

The PSC's review coincided with a broader review of the state's generous tax incentives, established four years ago to encourage the buy-in of wind or solar energy systems.

Changes that are approved would not apply to Entergy New Orleans customers because the utility is regulated by the City Council.